


(try to) take his place

by patrokla



Category: Babyshambles (Band), The Libertines
Genre: Drug Use, M/M, Multi, Snapshots, Unrequited Love, i'm not sure about all this but what can ya do, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-31 01:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6449962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drew has known Pete Doherty for all of three minutes when he realizes he’s in love.</p><p>Or; how Drew fell in love, joined a band, and made a lot of poor choices (and a few good ones).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The One

**Author's Note:**

> I started this probably last November, and have been trying to poke it into shape since then, only semi-successfully I'm afraid. It's not quite finished, but I think mostly...
> 
> This owes a lot to 1) that video of Babyshambles playing Penguins where Peter and Drew share a mic, and 2) to my belief that there should be at least one Drew/Pat fic in the world, even if it's one centred around Drew trying to get with Peter, in a bassist sort of way.
> 
> Warnings for: drug use, swearing, violence, and all the other sordid things you'd expect.

November 2003  
  
Drew has known Pete Doherty for all of three minutes when he realizes he’s in love. Well, alright - lust, and a bit of love. The love is the important part. He feels almost foolish, falling head-over-heels like he’s a teenager who saw a picture of Pete in a magazine and decided he was The One.  
  
And yet. And yet it doesn’t quite matter, because he thinks Pete might be a bit in love with him too. Of course Pete falls in love probably five times a day, with people and places and the way the sun filters through old stained glass windows. He’s a Romantic, to a point that would be laughable if he didn’t have more than his fair share of charm and wit. He’s - okay, you get the point. Gaining Pete’s affection and attention isn’t highly unusual, and yet the way Pete’s eyes linger on him in the pub they’re sat in, surrounded by friends and hangers-on - well, it makes Drew feel special.  
  
Special until Carl Barat walks through the door ten minutes later, looking pissed, pissed off, and unfortunately attractive. It’s like a switch is flicked in Pete; one minute he’s chatting casually to the girl sitting next to him, the next he’s completely focused on Carl. Carlos, he calls him, and says it a few times before Carl will sit next to him. They sit with arms thrown around each other and hands at each others throats by turns, Carl always on the edge of being furious and Pete on the edge of being affronted. It’s terrible, fascinating, and impossible to look away from. Drew feels insignificant, but he barely minds.  
  
As the evening progresses, and the empty glasses in front of the pair multiply, Drew begins to mind a little more. Not the insignificance so much as Carl’s presence, and the way that Pete is aware of it.  
  
It’s not that they don’t talk to other people, they do, but every few minutes Pete will glance around to see where Carl is and who he’s talking to. And it’s clear that if Carl left, Pete would leave too. If Carl got in a fight - which must happen often, he’s a sullen pretty-faced boy, a terrible combination - then Pete would fight too.  
  
Drew’s not sure if he’s jealous of their bond, or of Carl’s invisible claim on Pete, or of the way Pete brightens when Carl comes over to him. Probably all three, but most definitely the latter two. Drew wants someone to light up for him like Pete does for Carl. And if that person somehow ends up being Pete? Well. He’s not going to complain. 


	2. This Charming Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drew can’t help but feel that things are going to get worse. That his worries now will pale in comparison to his worries later.

December 2003  
  
Drew sees Pete three or four more times in the next few weeks, never with Carl around. He’d almost prefer it that way, except that Pete is increasingly scattered and strange, and he shoots up every single time. The Libertines are playing sold out shows, and Pete seems like he couldn’t care less about it.   
  
It’s - look, Drew’s never really been into hard drugs. He’ll drink a bit, smoke a bit, indulge in whatever pills everyone passes around, but at the end of the day, he doesn’t crave them. Sometimes they make things fun, sometimes they don’t. He’s never really viewed them as a necessity for a good night out - or a good life.   
  
Pete clearly doesn’t feel the same. He doesn’t look like he’s constantly jonesing for a fix exactly, but Drew feels a little sick when he realizes that Pete doesn’t just light up for Carl, he lights up for heroin, too. And crack, and enough alcohol to down a small elephant. He doesn’t ever get completely fucked, not when Drew’s there, but that's got a lot to do with the fact that Drew keeps pushing a guitar into his hands when he starts searching his pockets for whatever he stashes in there.   
  
Shockingly, Pete doesn’t seem to mind Drew's diversions. He’s easygoing, and always seems slightly charmed that Drew wants to hear him play - anything. Which, Drew does like hearing him play, but that's increasingly less and less central to it.   
  
He should untangle himself now, before it gets worse, but. But Pete smiles at him, throws an arm around his shoulders, even falls asleep on his leg once. And it’s endearing, of course it is, and the moments when Drew can focus on the warmth of Pete's skin against his wind around his heart, sweet and sticky, inescapable. 

In between those moments, though, Drew can’t help but feel that things are going to get worse; that his worries now will pale in comparison to his worries later. That the night he met Pete, what feels like an eon ago, was a night he'll look back on with regret.


	3. Pin Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drew supposes it’s a bit masochistic to stick with someone, to join their band even, when he knows that he and the band will always be second-best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've done my best to put together an accurate timeline for this story, but tbqh there's a lot of conflicting information out there, so. If any of the dates seem terribly off, please let me know.

February 2004  
  
Drew supposes it’s a bit masochistic to stick with someone, to join their band even, when he knows that he and the band will always be second-best.   
  
And yet, when Pete calls him at 2 am and says, “I need a bass player for Babyshambles, you in?” - he says yes immediately.   
  
Why? Why, he wonders the next morning as he pushes his bass case into the taxi, is he doing this to himself? He knows, somehow, that this will last for a long time. He also knows that he’s a bit of a stand-in for Carl in Pete’s life, there to keep him from doing anything truly stupid, but relaxed enough to join in a bit, and not turn into a nag. Drew’s probably being used, but he doesn’t quite mind because - well, because it’s not all responsibility.   
  
It’s the thrill that comes with making music, always, but even better with Pete because his mind moves so quickly. Drew is always stumbling to catch up, and it’s a challenge that he loves.   
  
It’s the way Pete looks at him sometimes, all limpid dark eyes and a smile that comes from a thousand miles away. Like he’s seeing Drew, and something (some _one_ ) else as well, but it’s the first part that’s important. It’s the first part that makes Drew feel wanted, like he’s found some kind of home after wandering all of these years.  
  
At the end of the day, Drew is powerless against Pete’s charms, even in situations where they’re not even in play. It’s no surprise, really, when he shows up to the first official Babyshambles practice and Pete’s too high to play, Gemma’s headed out the door in disgust, and Pat is well on his way to joining Pete. It’s also no surprise that Drew doesn’t bow out right then, that all it takes is a vacuous smile from Pete and a slurred hand gesture that probably means ‘sit down and shoot up if y’like.’ Drew doesn’t shoot up, but he does sit down and Pete promptly sprawls across him. And so he stays, unwilling to make Pete move, and knowing he’s been pinned down and trapped in more ways than one.


	4. Drawn Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes six long and bloody months to record the album. This is due to three big reasons, and hundreds of smaller ones. In order of magnitude, they go something like this:

October 2005  
  
It takes six long and bloody months to record the album. This is due to three big reasons, and hundreds of smaller ones. In order of magnitude, they go something like this:  
  
It’s close to impossible to get everyone in the studio at once, let alone to a practice. If it’s not Pete failing to show up then it’s Pat, and often for the same reasons. Gemma had left the band at the beginning of the year, rather sensibly in Drew’s opinion, and while Adam is fairly reliable, he has much less patience for the delays that Drew has grown used to. At one point in the year Pat just disappears, reappearing several months later with nary a word in between except for one harried phone call to Drew, just to tell him that his father had died and he needed time away to think.   
  
Reason number two seems trivial, bearable, and reasonable at first, Pete writing a line in some later scrapped song about Carl and then scribbling it out. And then it happens again. And again, until he’s no longer writing Carl’s name but making a dozen (barely) veiled references to him and the band’s implosion in every other verse. Rewrites are constant, things becoming more or less sympathetic depending on Pete’s mood, and Drew wouldn’t really mind except Pete is too wrapped up in it. Everything he sings is imbued with a bitter rage that occasionally subsides to distressed confusion, and it’s an exhausting way to play. When it comes to actually recording the songs, Pete gets so worked up a few times that he leaves, and in one horrible and immediately deleted take of Sticks and Stones he starts crying. Drew feels as though he is holding things together by his fingertips, Pete pulling away in one direction, Pat in another, and the music itself crumbling to pieces.   
  
The third reason is the drugs. It comes third because, at this point in time, Pete is still mostly himself, and Drew is so used to him constantly lighting or shooting up that it really only becomes an issue when Pete is too fucked to play. And yet, and yet. Drew worries. He can’t help it, he loves Pete, and he’s watching him slowly but surely fall off a cliff. And he’s really doing nothing to stop it.  
  
Amidst all this chaos, Pete kisses Drew for the first time, as they're walking back from an informal gig that Pete had pocketed all the money from. It's not unexpected, not really, because Pete watches Drew nearly as much as Drew watches him, and when Drew bumps him with his shoulder as they weave their way through London, more than a little drunk, and Pete looks at him with wide, dark eyes and bites his lip, well - Drew knows what it means. It's a long kiss, and a bit messy, not the quick pecks that he'd seen Pete and Carl exchange a few times, and when Pete finally pulls away he raises his eyebrows at Drew, and Drew feels like he's been found out somehow.

And then, a few weeks later, comes a second kiss, and then a third, and so on until by the twentieth one, which is captured by a fucking professional photographer, it all feels perfectly natural. Pete never does anything more, but sometimes he _looks_ at Drew and Drew thinks maybe it’s only a matter of time.


End file.
